Jerzy Szacki

Jerzy Ryszard Szacki (6 February 1929 – 25 October 2016) was a Polish sociologist and historian of ideas. From 1973 he was a professor at the University of Warsaw, and in 1991 became a member of the Polish Academy of Sciences. He is considered one of the most prominent representatives of the Warsaw School of the History of Ideas.

Life Szacki was born in Warsaw in 1929. After World War II, he worked for the Polish Telephone Authority, first as a locksmith, then at a desk job. In 1948, he began to study sociology at the University of Warsaw. the University of Oxford (All Souls College and the Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen (Vienna).

From 1972 to 1976, Szacki was the president of the Polish Sociological Association, and held numerous further administrative positions, including in the Polish Academy of Sciences (PAN). From 1974 to 1991, he was editor-in-chief of the Polish Sociology Bulletin.

Szacki wrote his monumental Historia myśli socjologicznej ("History of Sociological Thought") in Minneapolis and Oxford. It was originally published in English in 1979; while it failed to make a strong impact on international sociology, it became a popular textbook among Polish teachers and students of sociology, a trend that continued after his death. The updated edition of 2002 was awarded with the Prize of the Foundation for Polish Science (Nagroda Fundacji na rzecz Nauki Polskiej), colloquially dubbed the "Polish Nobel Prize", in 2003.

In the 1970s, Szacki began to maintain contacts with oppositional circles, although he never became an active figure in politics. In 1978, he participated in the informal discussion group Doświadczenie i Przyszłość, which brought together pro- and anti-government intellectuals.

In 1991, Szacki co-founded the Solidarność Pracy (Labour Solidarity), a short-lived social-democratic party formed by left-wing Solidarity members, which merged with the Labour Union (Unia Pracy) the following year. In 1998, he prefaced a book about the Gdańsk-based milieu of Polish liberals edited by the politician Donald Tusk (then a member of the Freedom Union).

In 1994, Szacki published a book on Liberalism after communism (original title Liberalizm po komunizmie), which was translated into English and other languages and received favourable reviews in the West. In it, Szacki addresses the challenges faced by liberal democracy in an environment shaped by decades of communism and earlier non-democratic governments - a topic that has occupied much of Szacki's academic publications and popular essays in the general press.

Szacki was married to fellow sociologist Barbara Szacka. He died on 25 October 2016.

Works 1958: Historia jedynego romansu. Opowieść o Mochnackim [The history of a romance: A tale about Mochnacki]. Warszawa: Wiedza Powszechna. 1962: Ojczyzna, naród, rewolucja: Problematyka narodowa w polskiej myśli szlacheckorewolucyjnej [Fatherland, nation, revolution: The national issue in the Polish Nobles' revolutionary]. Warszawa: Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy. 1964: Durkheim. Warszawa: Wiedza Powszechna. 1965: Kontrrewolucyjne paradoksy: wizje świata francuskich antagonistów Wielkiej Rewolucji, 1789-1815 [Counter-revolutionary paradoxes: The world-views of the French antagonists of the Great Revolution, 1789-1815]. Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe. 1968: Utopie [Utopias]. Warszawa: Iskry. 1971: Tradycja: przegląd problematyki [Tradition: A survey of the topic]. Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe. 1977 (ed.): Czy kryzys socjologii? [Sociology in crisis?]. Warszawa: Czytelnik. 1977 (ed.): Idea społeczeństwa komunistycznego w pracach klasyków marksizmu [The idea of communist society in the works of Marxism's classics]. Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe. 1979: History of Sociological Thought. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press. 1980 (2nd edition 2000): Spotkania z Utopią [Encounters with Utopia], Warszawa: Iskry / Wydawnictwo Sic! (2nd edition). 1981: Historia myśli socjologicznej [History of Sociological Thought]. Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe. (new edition 2002. 1984 (ed. with Joanna Kurczewska): Tradycja i nowoczesność [Tradition and modernity]. Warszawa: Czytelnik. . 1985 (ed. with Edmund Mokrzycki, Maria Ofierska): O społeczeństwie i teorii społecznej: księga poświę̨cona pamięci Stanisława Ossowskiego [On society and social theory: A book dedicated to the memory of Stanisław Ossowski]. Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe. . 1986: Znaniecki. Warszawa: Wiedza Powszechna. 1991: Dylematy historiografii idei oraz inne studia i szkice [Dilemmas of the history of ideas and other studies and sketches]. Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe. 1994: Liberalizm po komunizmie. Kraków: Znak. (English translation: Liberalism after communism. Budapest, New York: Central European University Press, 1995. . 1995 (ed.): Sto lat socjologii polskiej: od Supińskiego do Szczepańskiego [One hundred years of Polish sociology: From Supiński to Szczepański]. Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe. . 1997 (ed.): Ani książe, ani kupiec: obywatel. Idea społeczeństwa obywatelskiego w myśli współczesnej [Neither prince nor merchant: The citizen. The idea of civil society in contemporary thought]. Kraków: Znak.